Jeffrey Hull

Navigating the New Landscape of Leadership

I help senior leaders navigate the new landscape of leadership with advisory, coaching and consulting services worldwide.

I am passionate about sharing my experience coaching and training some of the world’s top leaders. As the author of the best-selling book from Penguin Random House, “FLEX: The Art and Science of Leadership in a Changing World” — I am committed to combining the best science on transformational leadership with tips, assessments and coaching techniques to motivate anyone to step up and lead.
You can learn more about the book Marshall Goldsmith calls “a tour de force combining the art and science that makes for great leadership.” at www.jeffreyhull.com.

In addition to founding and managing the strategic leadership consultancy, Leadershift Inc. I support the growth and the evidence-based research in the field of coaching as Director of Global Development at the Institute of Coaching, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. I am also a clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School and an adjunct professor of leadership at New York University.

As a highly sought after public speaker, I give keynotes, facilitate workshops, and lead retreats on a regular basis for major corporate and non-profit organizations across the globe. Recent clients include MSCI, Goldman Sachs, Yale New Haven Medical Institute, ESMT business school, the Korean Coaching Association, the International Leadership Association (ILA), Canadian Positive Psychology Association (CPPA), Consulting Psychologists Association, and the International Coach Federation (ICF).

Keynotes

Want to know what’s new and emerging in the coaching profession? With current disruptions due to the pandemic and the economic uncertainty that exists globally, how has the coaching field changed and adapted? What focus areas are most sought after by our clients? What will be the unique challenges for coaches moving forward?

In this episode, Jeffrey Hull, Ph.D., the Director of Global Development at the Institute of Coaching (a Harvard Medical School affiliate), best-selling author, and Board Certified Executive Coach, shared an overview of current research in 

1. Leadership coaching
2. The evolution of the coaching field
3. Coaching during the pandemic

Based on his decade as a leader with the IOC, faculty at Harvard and NYU, and over twenty years of experience as an executive coach, along with recent research conducted by the IOC, Dr. Hull shared the latest trends coaches need to be aware of – and leverage — to ensure their success now and in the future.

Leadership Coaching Evolution

• Coaching dynamics with leadership have evolved extensively in the last ten years.
• Due to the pandemic, the need for support, agility, and transformation has quadrupled in the past two years.
• If we want to prosper as high-performing organizations and leaders in this disrupted age, we have to transform.

Top 5 Trends in Coaching 2021

1. From C-suite to All-suite

• We, as coaches, focused on the C-suite earlier. Coaching was at the top level. 
• Today, we’re focusing more on All-suite coaching. We are now scaling coaching to the entire organization.
• Organizations are getting flatter. So the focus is now more on networking and bringing up the next generation of leaders. 

 2. Integration of technology and humanity

• The evolution of technology impacts everything we do. 
• More organizations, including coaching training organizations, are using technology-based applications in their coaching.
• More coaches are now integrating technology into their practice. And to match the speed in the coaching space, you really need to do your homework, learn what’s going on with the technology space. 

3. The collapse of Distinction: well-being, leadership, positive, psychology, life, career = holistic ecosystem

• When coaching started, we made distinctions between health coaching, positive psychology, life coaching, career coaching, and leadership coaching. It’s still true to a certain extent. 
• Leadership coaches tend to focus on the executives or on the succession of next-generation leaders. 
• Overall, there’s a confluence of health, well-being, career, positive psychology as they’re crucial for the success of the folks we coach.
• Hence, these days, it’s less important to make a distinction between productivity and well-being, health and wellness.
• Most leadership clients are also interested in positive psychology, wellness, holistic or human ecosystem. So as coaches, we must break down our silos.
• We’re now working towards an ecosystem approach to coaching, a human-based approach that includes wellness, productivity, positive psychology, and leadership.
• As coaches, we need to be aware of the evolution of the profession, which is becoming more integral and integrated.

4. From ego/goals to ecosystems

• Moving away from individualistic goal-centered coaching towards a broader ecosystem approach.
• Almost five years ago, “setting individual goals” was the primary driver of coaching. It’s not vanishing. It’s still relevant and appropriate to set individual goals. However, more and more organizations are starting to ask their leaders to think systematically. And think about the broader impact their leadership, team, organization, and culture have on the world.
• Leadership, in general, is becoming more of an ecosystemic perspective. And we, as coaches, should mind this as we work with individuals and leaders. This evolution away from purely individualistic goal-driven coaching towards a broader systemic approach is crucial and a big evolution in our field.

5.Coaching as a science, not a craft or hobby

• It’s not going to be enough very soon if it’s not already true to just get a coaching training certificate. 
• As a professional, we need to be continuously connected to the new research around high-performance, well-being, work-life balance, virtual work, hybrid work, and dynamics.

Six Adaptive Shifts Toward Leadership Agility

• Based on his research, Jeffrey distilled Leadership Coaching into six fundamental dimensions. 
• These dimensions are evolving within the leadership agility framework towards a higher-performing, agile, flexible leadership style required to be successful in today’s world. 

1. Flexible
2. Intentional
3. Emotional
4. Real
5. Collaborative
6. Engaged

Leadership Agility Framework

• Leadership is both a combination of self-awareness of one’s self, strength, capacities, and leading and engaging with teams and the organization.
• Flexible decision-making and intentional communications are the first two dimensions. Also the core skill sets for leaders.
• There’s a need now for a much more flexible, inclusive, and collaborative approach to decision-making.
• Flexibility is becoming crucial in leadership style for success. 
• Intentional communication is about stepping back and reflecting on self-style as a leader. It’s about how we communicate our goal, vision, and thinking to the team.
• Emotional Agility is the third crucial domain. Awareness of our own feelings and incorporation of the emotional context of others into the space as a leader is emotional agility.
• The realness dimension is about authenticity. It’s about the spectrum between competence, strength, confidence, humility, and vulnerability.
• Emotional Agility and Realness dimensions are about how we show up emotionally as a leader with our people.
• Collaborative and Engagement are highly somatic/physical components about how we present ourselves with our people as leaders. 
• The collaboration includes coaching. It’s about how you are with your team to create an outcome. 
• Engagement is similar but takes a further step towards creating the engaged space for productivity, creativity, and innovation to spark the best out of a highly motivated and engaged group or team.

How do you nurture “transformational” space within the client (and yourself)?

Strengths:

• Help clients know their strengths. Help them reflect on what they do well as a starting point.
• That’s the ground upon which they can expand.
• Do you know your strengths? Can you expand them?

Spikes:

• What do they do that is uniquely theirs? What’s their gift?
• When they get in touch with that gift, it can be so motivating and inspiring to use it as a springboard to all of the kinds of expansion towards agility.
• Are you aware of your unique capacities and talents? Are you nurturing their continued expansion?

NUGGETS from Jeffery Hull:

• Leadership Agility is about situational leadership on steroids. 
• Think about what you need to be creative, what’s at the core of your emotional passion for the work.
• You do not have to lose your ability to lead highly productive people. You can focus on the goals and get tasks. But you have to recognize what it takes to engage with a team to be creative and innovative.
• Teams need to be able to feel safe enough to discuss when things need to be improved.
• It’s our job as coaches to be a bit provocative and poke a little under the surface. 

“Often, our greatest strengths become a liability. As coaches, it is our job to help leaders reframe and see these as growth.”

– Jeffrey Hull

If you missed or want to rewatch our webinar with Jeffrey Hull on “The Value of Coaching in an Age of Disruption”, catch up now: https://youtu.be/tUrtlfh2PN4

A big shoutout to Jeffrey Hull for sharing such powerful, research-backed insights on leadership coaching!

Don’t miss out on this one. Stay tuned for the next episode!